Meet The Feebles - Production

Production

The film was originally conceived as part of a television series, and only belatedly became a feature, after Japanese investors proposed expanding it; as such, the script was hastily re-written. The dialogue was recorded before shooting began. Made on an extremely low budget considering the time-consuming process of working with puppets, the film went over budget and schedule. Some scenes (including the Vietnam flashback, were funded by members of the film crew, and filmed secretly under the title The Frogs of War. The Vietnam flashback includes a game of Russian roulette as a parody of The Deer Hunter.

An initial application for Film Commission money was rejected, ironically by Executive Director Jim Booth, who a short time later became Jackson's producer. The Commission did eventually grant the production two-thirds of its $750,000 budget, though relationships between the funders and the production soured and the Film Commission removed its credit from the film.

It is often mistakenly stated that there are no human characters in the film; the character Abi is a human. However, there are no real-life human characters in the film. Peter Jackson has a cameo as an audience member dressed as an alien from Bad Taste.

Every vehicle seen in the film is a variation on the Morris Minor, including a specially constructed limousine. Morris Minors also appear in Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead. According to the Internet Movie Database, the production team could not get hold of blank rounds for the M60 machine gun used in the film, and therefore the gun was firing live ammunition.